Did Illusion Day at my class on Monday. Kids always seem to love the material in that class. Now, when I say illusion I mean optical illusions not the sawing a girl in half illusion. And the kids seem to know this because we talked about optical and auditory illusions the first day.
I always seem to find something to tweak each time I present the same class. I re-worked the illusion sheet, which we didn't even get to! I'll bring it again next week. I haven't done The Fishy Story for a while and have forgotten how much the kids love it. I need to re-work and update it and use it more often.
Two new things I decided to add were the Cartesian Diver and Floating Asteroid.
The Cartesian Diver was made from a 16 oz water bottle and a Wendy's ketchup packet. That's right, a ketchup packet from Wendy's. It turns out a ketchup packet has the right size air bubble in it to make it float in water. The kids were trilled to see it go up and down. I passed it around for everyone to try.
The Floating Asteroid uses a bendy straw and small ball made from aluminum foil or as my dad called it, tin foil. You bend the straw to 90 degrees and blow through it like a pipe. You hold the roughly one inch ball of foil above the straw hole about an inch or so. Start to blow gently but steadily through the straw and release the ball. The ball should float above the straw on an invisible stream of air! The size of the ball is important. Use about a 4 by 6 inch square of foil to start and form it into a ball about one inch in diameter. Don't make it too tight. If it is too small the air can't flow around it creating air pressure that keeps it centered over the straw.
Maybe I'll post a video of the process if there is enough interest.